Deadlock

6

He went to the crews’ mess and dunnage, where the cabins of the deckhands and porters were. They weren’t much. Small with a couple bunks and a chest of drawers. A tiny closet. Not much else. The crew slept in these rooms and knowing that, he wondered as he had in the mate’s cabin what had happened. What drove them off the ship. He went from cabin to cabin to cabin. What had they been thinking? Or were they thinking at all? Was it some kind of mutiny or something much worse? Maybe they all just went nuts and jumped overboard, thinking the open ocean was better than what was on the ship, what was coming for them, one by one.

Maybe they stood around listening for things with their heads cocked to the side, listening for the approach of something. Something so terrible they couldn’t bear to look upon it so they ran screaming up onto the decks, jumping over the side into the deep, sucking darkness—

That was enough.

Charlie had no idea what was wrong with his head tonight. He wasn’t a guy that gave in to things like that. Christ, his nerves had gone to jelly. His stomach was filled with butterflies and had been since he first stepped foot on this hulk.

What the hell was that about?

He shook his head, lit a cigarette, and blew out a column of smoke. That was better. A little nicotine would clear his head, help him focus, keep his nerves down. He smoked and did not listen. Oh, there were plenty of sounds out there, but that was to be expected on a ship. He ignored them. He figured it wouldn’t be long now before Arturo’s boys would have to turn up the heat. If one of them showed again, he was going to give him a couple slugs from the .45.

Murder? You’re willing to resort to murder for what will be no more than a practical joke of sorts? Sure, sure I am. That’s my little joke.

There couldn’t have been a worse place to go nuts than out in the middle of the ocean, he got to thinking. Nowhere to run or hide. Nothing to divert your mind. You’d just sit there while the insanity sank its roots deeper and deeper into you, took you over, infested you, became a part of you. You wouldn’t even know the difference after a while. You’d start doing crazy things like… like standing around with your head cocked to the side like you were listening for something… and… and sooner or later, you would hear it coming. Oh yes, it would come at night with a slow shuffling sort of sound like bare feet, getting closer and closer. And it would bring a stink with it… gassy and rotten like a dead dog bursting with maggots… and then maybe you’d see a face, a woman’s face only fish belly white, and you’d know that what you were seeing wasn’t exactly human, but some elemental thing pretending to be a woman. It would be too much. You wouldn’t be able to take it so you’d… you’d have to jump overboard… or… or maybe throw a rope up over a beam and tie a noose, slide it over your head while you stood on a stool. Then… then…

“Stop it,” he said under his breath. “Stop this shit right now.”

Charlie came out of it, realizing he’d been daydreaming about the worst sort of thing and in the worst sort of place, the whole time studying a beam overhead with his light and actually wondering how it would feel to slip a noose around his neck and jump off a stool.

He tried to laugh it all off inside his head, but he just couldn’t seem to generate more than a cold, little chuckle that was not funny or reassuring in the least. He felt that sensation along his spine again. His palms were actually sweaty and his stomach was tied tight as a corset. He didn’t feel afraid exactly, but almost confused or befuddled like nothing was making sense. He had the oddest sense of teetering on the edge of some immense black drop-off, that if he did not get out of there, he’d lose his footing and drop from sight.

It was ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous.

He finished his cigarette and crushed it out on the floor. He wondered why he thought those sailors might see a woman coming for them or something like a woman. He’d been thinking about his old lady. But she was no spook. She was the salt of the earth and all that, he figured, raising five kids on her own after his old man went out for a ride and never came back like in that Springsteen song. No, Ma Petty was the best and he missed her every day. It wasn’t her fault that two of his brothers were in-stir and Charlie himself swam in the dirty pond of organized crime. Not her fault at all.

Why then? Why had he pictured a woman?

Because the companionway leading below decks had smelled sweet, hadn’t it? Like a woman’s perfume. No, no, it had been too strong, too… savage. The odor had been sweet, yes, but overpoweringly sweet, cloying and heavy, almost gagging. A sickly-sweet sort of stench like the slow seepage from a corpse.

There went his head again. He had to keep his imagination down or he wasn’t going to make it an hour, let alone until dawn.

He left dunnage and when a cobweb broke against his cool, sweating face, his heart actually skipped a beat and he had to strangle back a cry deep in his throat. That wasn’t a cobweb. It was crawling. He dropped his flashlight and the damn thing went out. He had a back-up in his duffel bag, but he was not wasting batteries. Not here. Not tonight. The flashlight had rolled through the doorway of another cabin.

He had to find it.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to dig out the other flashlight. That would be giving in to fear. Besides, he had his Zippo. That would light the way.

Arturo’s a liar, he thought quite suddenly as if the thought was placed in his head. The plant’s down on this ship because he didn’t want me having lights.

Charlie lit his Zippo and tried to ignore the long, reaching shadows that played over the bulkheads. The flashlight had rolled in here. The cabin was almost a duplicate of the other one. There was only one place it could be. Yes, it must have rolled under the bunk.

He got a sudden strong whiff of something like perfume, a flowery, musky smell that came and went.

He got down on his hands and knees. Sure, there it was. He reached under the bunk, feeling around. The flame of the lighter in his other hand flickered like someone had blown upon it. His fingers brushed the tube of the flashlight and he yanked it out with a silent cry on his lips.

He dropped the lighter and slapped the flashlight against his leg. A spear of yellow light came out of it. Tensing, breathing hard, he played the beam around down there, but there was nothing. He had thought… no, he had felt the back of his hand brush against something like wet lips. There was even a sheen of wetness from his knuckles to his wrist.

A leak. Old hulk like this was probably leaky as hell.

He grabbed the Zippo and stumbled out into the corridor, his skin beaded with gooseflesh. He had to lean up against the bulkhead for a moment to control his breathing. There was no way he’d felt a wet mouth under the bunk. “What you’ve got there,” he said in a low voice, “is a wet mattress. Probably water dripping from the ceiling soaked it. That’s what you felt: a wet mattress.”

It seemed perfectly reasonable… yet, from a tactile standpoint, what he had felt was not only wet but soft, almost blubbery.

Oh, Arturo would love this, you fucking idiot. He’d eat this right up with both hands. Is that what you want? You want to give him that kind of satisfaction?

Charlie didn’t.

He wanted anything but.

Thing was, though, Arturo wasn’t here and he could not know what it was like on this great, echoing ship, this iron coffin. He was at his club, putting back a Jack and Coke, some leggy dancer gyrating on his lap. He was not here in the silence and dust and dire memory, feeling it working at his guts and sliding cold fingers up his spine. And the scary thing was, Charlie was not sure he himself was there either.

Because he didn’t know who this guy was.

He didn’t know whose skin he was wearing.

All he knew was that this guy, this imposter, was definitely scared shitless and he did not even know why.